Drone jammers on your own property

Many companies are watching the trend and are trying to get into the counter drone industry. They have introduced all sorts of drone guns, anti-UAS shotgun shells, attack birds, net cannons, lasers, missiles, radio signal jammers, radio spoofers, etc.

Prohibits the manufacture, importation, marketing, sale or operation of unlicensed cellphone jammers within the United States (47 U.S.C. &sect; 302a(b)) ( Only exception is to the U.S. Government 302a(c)). Yes, you read that right. Depending on how you market counter drone measures, you could be doing something illegal! This section also prohibits the testing R & D of drone jammers on your own property. FCC laid the smack down on a Chinese company in 2014 with a fine of $34.9 million! Yes, you guessed it, the FCC order cited 302(b). Hobbyking found out that the FCC is very serious about the marketing of unlicensed radio transmitters when they received this FCC order.

The jamming could be illegal or legal but we know it will be happening in the future. People will take things into their own hands and might start creating illegal drone jamming equipment as a means of “self-help.”

Their communication protocols are relatively simple and not encrypted. Cut the link and the drone will automatically initiate a landing procedure as a safety measure. That is the principle of operation of so-called “anti-drone guns”: point the gun at a drone and blast a powerful signal over the most common frequencies such as 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz. Blinded by the gun, the drone will assume that it lost connection from the pilot and initiate the return to home procedure. Add a gsm signal jammer to the mix and the drone will lose track of its position, drift away, or land immediately depending on its emergency protocol. Simply put, the anti-drone guns are just (overpriced) multi-band radio transmitters equipped with high gain directional antennas.

Unfortunately, wifi jammers device is not operative against autonomous drones which follow pre-programmed routes via GPS waypoints (e.g., Pixhawk). Moreover, many custom-made drones can be fitted with different radio frequencies (72 Mhz, 433 MHz, 800/900 MHz, 1.2/1.3 GHz, etc.) to escape the scope of the drone guns. Jamming the GPS can be effective unless the drone is equipped with an inertial navigation system which allows the aircraft to navigate autonomously without the help external signals.

An example of a multi-layered system is the Anti-UAV Defense System (AUDS) from Blighter Surveillance Systems, Chess Dynamics, and Enterprise Control Systems that uses radar; electro-optics, cameras, target tracking software, and RF jamming technology.